Currency: Dollar steady ahead of OCR decision

The New Zealand dollar was little changed today ahead of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's (RBNZ) interest rate decision on Thursday.

By 5pm today the New Zealand was buying US50.25c from US50.31c at 8am and US50.16c at 5pm on Friday.

The currency peaked at US50.90c during the weekend when the US non-farm payrolls data triggered a brief bout of US dollar weakness.

Locally today news that residential building work in place fell 13.4 per cent in the fourth quarter and 31.4 per cent on year-ago levels had economists firming up a negative gross domestic product numbers for that quarter.

"Housing prices continue to fall, reducing incentives to build," ASB said in a report.

But the main event of the week is the RBNZ decision. The market was split between a 50 and 75 basis point cut, BNZ said.

Westpac said the corrective rally in the NZ dollar since last Wednesday has had more legs than it expected and the currency could reach US52c.

By today's local close the NZ dollar was down to 0.3966 euros from 0.3990 at 5pm on Friday, and Westpac said the cross is in a range.

Australian data this week, including February employment figures on Thursday, should provide action on the Australian cross rate. It was A78.50c at 5pm from A78.15c on Friday.

The NZ dollar was little changed against the yen to 49.25. Westpac said the 50 level was critical.

The trade weighted index was up to 51.86 at 5pm from 51.85 on Friday.

Currency rates:

NZ dlr/US dlr US50.25c US50.16c

NZ dlr/Aust dlr A78.50c A78.15c

NZ dlr/euro 0.3966 0.3990

NZ dlr/yen 49.25 49.30

NZ dlr/stg 35.58p 35.40p

NZ TWI 51.86 51.85

Aust dlr/US dlr 63.95c 64.16c

Euro/US dlr 1.2679 1.2575

US dlr/yen 98.07 98.22

- NZPA